


Guiding Light

by IncomingAlbatross



Series: Maybe the Real Mystery was the Father-Son Relationship We Found Along the Way [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Feels, Gen, Hugs, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, Soos is Soos, Stan worries about his definitely-not-son, Teen Soos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23859109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncomingAlbatross/pseuds/IncomingAlbatross
Summary: Stan's been doing this Mystery Shack thing for over twenty years, sure, but it's not like he's gottenattachedto anyone or anything in the process. They're all just a bunch of suckers who come and go with the years, if not the seasons...Which is why it'stotally finethat Soos hasn't come over since he started high school this week. Stan definitely isn't worried, and hecertainlydoesn't miss him. It's fine, right? Everything's fine.(It's not, but it will be.)
Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines (mentioned only), Jesus "Soos" Alzamirano Ramirez & Stan Pines
Series: Maybe the Real Mystery was the Father-Son Relationship We Found Along the Way [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719340
Comments: 19
Kudos: 110





	Guiding Light

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this on Tumblr as a gift for @awesomebutunpractical, filling the "Lost/Stranded" square on my @foundfamilybingo card. Enjoy Stan being a dumb dad and Soos being his wonderful self. :P

Stan had given Soos the week off and now he was starting to wonder _why_.

Sure, it was the kid’s first week of high school or whatever, and sure this was always a slack week in the tourist trade and maybe he didn’t  _ need _ another pair of hands, but  _ geez. _ He hadn’t thought about the fact that what’s-his-name, the latest cashier kid, would be leaving too. What, was he supposed to do everything by himself around here?

Ugh, fine,  _ whatever. _ He might as well close up and get some work done downstairs—at least he didn’t have any kids hanging around underfoot, getting in his way, right?

See, if things had gone the way he’d maybe kinda assumed they would, with Soos showing up whether he was paid or not to babble about his new High School Experience and generally occupy Stan’s space for hours…well, Stan wouldn’t be getting anything  _ important _ done, would he? No.

So yeah, it was a good thing that it seemed like the kid might’ve finally wised up—here it was late Tuesday, after all, and Stan hadn’t seen a trace of him since Saturday, which was practically a  _ record _ .

Maybe, Stan thought… Maybe after three years of this kid underfoot, being weirdly obsessed with Stan and the Shack, high school would be the thing that finally sent life back to the status quo. With Soos moving on to whatever teenagers did nowadays, and Stan in the basement, uninterrupted again.

_ Good. _

Stan was just turning to the vending machine, still grumbling under his breath, when the phone rang.  _ Ugh, _ after eight o’clock? What was it, a vampire telemarketer?

“Hello,” he barked into the receiver.

“Mr. Pines,” a quiet, softly-accented voice responded, “would you send my boy home? It is getting late, and he will need to be up early for his new school tomorrow.”

Stan grimaced, surprised and vaguely offended. “What? I mean, maybe if I had him, but I haven’t even seen Soos today. I toldja I’d give him the week off!”

There was a slight pause from Soos’s grandma. “He has not been at the Shack today?” she repeated.

“No…” Stan’s gut was starting to catch up with his ears, now, and that wasn’t a good feeling at all. “Wait,” he said. “When did you last see him?”

There was a sigh from the other end of the phone—a  _ worried _ sigh. He’d never heard Soos’s Abuelita sound  _ worried _ before. “This morning, before school. He texted me after school that he would be late home—I have given him a phone now, he is a big boy—and said then that he would be visiting your Shack.”

“He hasn’t shown up that I noticed,” Stan said slowly. “But…if he has a phone, why call me?”

“He has not been answering,” Abuelita said, and the bad feeling in Stan’s gut solidified into a block of ice, cold and heavy.

This was  _ Gravity Falls. _ And the kid had gone  _ missing. _ That was a bad, bad combination

“I’ll, uh, I’ll look around,” he said quickly. “I mean, maybe he’s just outside, or wandered in here while I wasn’t lookin’, or something. I’ll find him—I mean, it’s  _ Soos. _ Where would he have gone?”

There were a lot of bad answers to that question, he knew—“gone” and “gone willingly” were very different things. But he shoved that knowledge deep, deep down, where it could panic by itself and  _ not distract him. _

From the hum Abuelita gave in response, she wasn’t much more reassured than Stan. But all she said was, “Thank you, Mr. Pines. Please make sure he gets home when you find him,” and her voice when she said it was a bit closer to its usual untroubled calm.

“Yeah, sure,” he began, but she had already hung up.

He dropped the phone and ran his hands over his face. “Okay,  _ think, _ Stan,” he said to himself. “It’s  _ Soos _ , he’s got some weird thing against lyin’ at all, let alone to his grandma. So if he said he was on his way here, somethin’ must’ve happened on the way…”

But that was too wide an area. It could’ve been at school—second day would be pretty early for the “lock ‘em up and leave ‘em” level of bullying, but heck, it wasn’t like Stan hadn’t seen it before. (Though  _ that _ target had never been  _ alone _ at school…) It could’ve been in town.

It could’ve been in the woods, and that thought made his gut twist more than anything. He  _ told _ Soos the woods weren’t safe, but if the kid tried to take a shortcut or something…

He shook his head. “I can’t do this alone,” he muttered, and turned back to the vending machine.

* * *

There was a spell, in Ford’s dumb journal. Well, there were more than a few spells, most of them either bizarrely useless or straight-up _dangerous,_ but this one had been…special.

_ A spell to “trace the threads binding your heart to others,”  _ his brother’s stupid fancy handwriting read.  _ When tested, it produced several strands of light emitting from my chest outward, in various directions, until out of my sight.  _ And then he went on about the  _ colors _ of the lights, because he was a  _ nerd. _

_ A warning, however!  _ The entry concluded.  _ This spell lasted only an hour (it was somewhat annoying to constantly have invisible-to-others lights around me during that period, honestly!), and once it broke I was unable to recast it. There may be a time limit in which it needs to “recharge,” it may be once per user, or there may be another component required for repeated use of which I am unaware. In any case, this is something to be aware of. (Although it  _ _ is _ _ a largely useless spell, so I don’t foresee that being much of an issue.) _

Stan gritted his teeth, reading over the instructions one more time. He could’ve tried it before—he’d  _ thought _ about trying it before—but, well. There were a whole lotta factors that could keep Ford’s “thread” or whatever showing up for him, even if it worked, and if it  _ did _ what good would it do him? He  _ knew _ where Ford was, or at least how to get there. No point using something that might not even  _ work _ to check that he was out there. (If he weren’t Stan would  _ know _ , anyway _. _ )

But he’d always kept it in the back of his mind, anyway, just in case. In case it became useful…or in case, one day, he just  _ needed _ to try for evidence the Ford was still out there, that they were still connected.

He only got to use it once, after all.

“Well,” he muttered now, slamming the book shut, “here goes nothin’, Soos. This better work.”

He shut his eyes and chanted the weird gibberish words Ford had written down (seriously, how was this magic? He could make up better magic-sounding words than that). Then, cautiously, he cracked his eyelids open again.

“…Oh,  _ wow. _ ”

There was a whole tangle of multicolored lights coming from his chest, enough that it took him a minute to sort through them. He didn’t look long at any of them, though, mind focused on  _ Soos. _

There was a cluster of strings all stretching off in the same direction (towards town, he figured after a second), two  _ bright _ red-and-purple strands dancing around each other and zooming south next to a couple fainter multicolored ones, a quieter but colorful string stretching east, and…

Oh yeah.  _ That _ one was definitely Soos.

Stan couldn’t have said  _ how _ he knew this one—almost the brightest one there, woven out of red and purple and yellow all mixed with traces of blue—was Soos’s. He just felt it, as soon as he focused on it; it felt like  _ Soos, _ somehow, warm and confusing but  _ good. Important. _

Time to follow the trail, then.

* * *

In the end, with the help of these  _ ridiculous _ magic lights, it was almost too easy. “Almost,” because Stan would never, ever complain about an easy win if he could get it, and also because he knew how bad the things that  _ could’ve _ happened were. But still. It was a little anticlimactic to just follow the string to Soos and then find him  _ actually sleeping against a tree _ in the middle of the woods.

Stan just stopped and stared at him, for a minute, because  _ really? _ Here was Stan, charging to his rescue in the middle of the night (okay, okay, nine PM, whatever), when it wasn’t even a  _ work day, _ and what kinda welcome did he get? A sleeping teenager!

He looked okay, though, so that was good. And the rope of light between him and Stan looked…kinda cool, maybe, now that Stan could see both ends. It disappeared into Soos’s chest, just like on Stan’s end, but the colors changed when they reached the kid. On his end, there was still red and yellow, but the purple gave way to green and there was a  _ lot _ more blue there. Weird.

Eh,  _ whatever. _

“Soos, hey, wake up, kid,” he said, crouching down. He was tempted to yell it, just for entertainment points, but after dark in these woods that was  _ probably _ not a good idea. Instead, he reached out a hand to shake the boy’s shoulder. “C’mon, time to go.”

Soos blinked his eyes open immediately, looking up at him with those stupid starry eyes Stan had always thought kids were supposed to grow out of. “Mr.  _ Pines! _ ” he cheered, throwing himself at Stan. “I got lost but I knew you’d find me!”

“Oof,” Stan grunted, falling back under the kid’s weight as he caught him. “Yeah, sure, kid, I only gave you a week off, not forever. What’re you doin’ in the woods anyway? Talk about a dumb idea…”

Soos shrugged, arms tightening around Stan. “I, uh, I don’t really know, Mr. Pines,” he said, sounding guilty. “I was on my way to the Shack, cause I wanted to tell you how high school was, but…then I heard singing?” He sniffled. “And I  _ know _ you always say not to go into the woods, but the singing was  _ really pretty _ and I wanted to get closer, and then I met these people and they were really cool-looking and I think they said there was a party? But, um, I don’t really remember that part too well. I just remember walking in the woods with them and feeling sleepy, but then they stopped? And they were all, like, yelling at each other about somebody being, like, ‘marked by the Great Protector’ or something, and then they left. And then I realized I was lost in the woods, but Abuelita always said when I was little that if I was lost I should stay where I was and wait for somebody to find me. So I sat down to wait, and then I was still tired so I guess I fell asleep.”

He paused, and then sniffled again. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Pines, that you had to come looking for me,” he said dolefully. “I was really proud of being in high school now and being, like, mature and stuff…but then I went and Hung Out With Strangers and tried to go to a Strange Party and I’m really sorry! Am I…Are you gonna fire me? Or make me take extra time off work?”

“Moses, kid, of course I’m not gonna fire you,” Stan blurted out. Freakin’ wood folk, thinking they could take  _ his kid… _ He didn’t know what they thought they were talking about with that “marked by the ‘Great Protector’” stuff, because Soos wasn’t marked by  _ anybody, _ but they were lucky they’d run off before  _ Stan _ got to them.

“I might make you come back to work  _ early _ ,” he added, “so you don’t have time to do stupid stuff. But…eh, you’re not dumb. You know the drill, right? You made a mistake, big deal. Learn from it and don’t do it again, capisce?”

Soos hugged him again, and okay, they were approaching a limit here. “Got it, Mr. Pines, sir!” he exclaimed, almost bouncing, and Stan groaned as he got back to his feet. Kid was too enthusiastic to live with, seriously.

“Yeah, okay, good,” he muttered, pulling the teenager up. “Let’ get you home then. Oh, and Soos?”

“Yes, Mr. Pines?”

He fixed him with a raised eyebrow. “Whatever you think you saw or heard out here,  _ that’s _ the kinda stuff that’ll make people think you’re crazy if you talk about it. Got it?”

Soos nodded earnestly. “I got it, Mr. Pines. I won’t talk about it to anyone, even the guys at school!”

“Oh yeah? You made friends with any a' those guys yet?”

And they began trudging home, Soos happily rambling about his new school experience. And if the lights winked out, finally, just as Stan refocused on them in search of  _ Ford’s, _ before he could settle whether it was there or not…

Well, that was okay for now, he figured. He’d used the spell for something else important, in the end.


End file.
